Kirk Perry and the art of changing your mind

Kirk Perry had already imagined the medal. In February 1984, the Richmond High School wrestler arrived at a regional tournament in Indiana expecting to advance. He was the top seed. He had beaten his opening opponent before. Then the opponent stopped the move Perry kept trying, and the match ended 3-2 against him. A hoped-for route to a college wrestling scholarship closed. His preparation for corporate life began with the rather inconvenient discovery that the other fellow had prepared too.

He later worked in fast food, saved for university and built a career that would carry him through Procter & Gamble, Google, Circana and Kenvue. The wrestling story stayed with him. Looking ahead could be useful; looking past the person directly in front of you could be expensive. Even decades later, he could still describe the match.

His subsequent career offers an interesting variation on that lesson. Perry has repeatedly changed where he stands to understand a familiar problem: why people choose one thing over another. He has worked for the company making the products, the company helping advertise them and the company examining what people actually bought. Each seat exposes something the previous one could conceal.

A scholarship with a condition

Getting to the first seat took time. Raised in a family whose parents worked on assembly lines, Perry attended 10 schools between kindergarten and high school. Before enrolling at the University of Cincinnati, he spent 18 months managing a Wendy’s to save money. During his first year, he worked 60 hours a week alongside his studies. Night school began to look like a practical necessity.

A business law professor encouraged him to speak with an assistant dean. That conversation brought scholarship support and a challenge: “Leave UC better than you found it.” A university had given him room to participate. He used it. The instruction also gave the assistance a future tense. Someone had helped him stay; he now had a reason to think about what he might leave behind.

By graduation in 1990, he had been student body president, Homecoming King and Mr. Bearcat. The last title sounds like an extracurricular activity conducted in a large furry suit; it recognizes an outstanding graduating male student. He also earned academic recognition in the business college. There was evidently little danger of this particular undergraduate going unnoticed.

The connection continued long after the ceremonies. Perry brought marketing experience to the university’s fundraising work, helped shape the Proudly Cincinnati campaign and served on the UC Foundation board from 2006 to 2013. His family endowed a scholarship for the Lindner Honors-PLUS program. In 2015, 25 years after graduating, he returned to give the commencement address and receive an honorary doctorate. The student who needed help had become someone able to provide it.

Twenty-three years, then a different seat

Perry joined P&G in 1990. His initial plan was comparatively modest: spend a few years there, then return for an MBA. The work changed the plan. Marketing opened into general management, where the remit extended across functions and the decisions carried consequences beyond the next campaign. He stayed for 23 years. The proposed short course had acquired rather a long syllabus.

In 1996, another possible departure turned into an international assignment. He moved to South Korea and later Japan, spending six years across the two countries. The Korean assignment offered the experience of building a smaller operation inside a large corporation. He became a general manager in Japan, returned to lead North American baby care and later took responsibility for U.S. operations and North American marketing.

By 2011, he was president of Global Family Care, the division associated with Bounty, Charmin and Puffs. These were businesses in which a name on a package had to justify its place in a shopping basket over and over. An executive could spend a career investigating that repetition. Perry had already spent most of his doing exactly that.

Then, late in 2013, he joined Google as president of brand solutions. His responsibilities would include relationships with major advertisers and agencies. After years inside a manufacturer, he was moving to a business selling those manufacturers ways to reach customers. The parties might attend some of the same meetings. They arrived with different questions.

A marketer audits his own habits

The revealing part of the Google chapter is how Perry later discussed his earlier work. In a 2020 presentation, he reviewed decisions he would make differently with the benefit of his technology experience. He wanted earlier investment in digital knowledge, more attention to mobile and stronger emotional connections with customers. He also questioned how far executives could stand from the practical business of execution.

Complexity, in his account, could travel down a hierarchy and out to agencies until the leader knew less about solving it. He favored getting closer to the work. The observation has an awkward implication for senior people: delegation can be necessary and still leave you poorly equipped to judge what comes back.

He offered a small, concrete example of a better customer experience: ordering a Tesla in three screens. There is an entire industry’s worth of inconvenience compressed into that comparison. He also argued for more experimentation. “Failure is a sign of progress,” he said. These were the reflections of an experienced marketer willing to revisit methods that had helped him advance.

“Failure is a sign of progress.”

Kirk Perry, 2020

The receipts enter the conversation

In May 2021, Perry became president and CEO of IRI, succeeding Andrew Appel. The company supplied technology, data and predictive analytics to consumer, retail and media businesses. His previous employers had dealt in products and the means of promoting them. IRI gave him a business concerned with measuring behavior and helping clients interpret it.

The job soon grew through combination. IRI and The NPD Group merged in August 2022. In March 2023, the combined business adopted the name Circana. At the time of the rebrand, its work covered more than 2,000 categories and 500,000 stores across 20 countries. Its clients included almost 7,000 brands and retailers. Those figures describe the company at that moment, rather than a claim about its size today.

The attraction of the combination was a wider view of spending. A consumer’s purchases stretch across categories that separate companies often study in isolation. Bringing the information together offered clients a chance to see more of the same household’s choices. For Perry, it also joined the consumer goods world he knew with the broader general merchandise perspective NPD brought.

He connected the company’s internal culture to that external task. In 2023, he signed the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion pledge, arguing that an organization serving varied markets and shoppers needed employees able to contribute different experiences. The connection was practical: a business interpreting people’s choices had reason to examine the range of people doing the interpreting.

A handover, then another assignment

In November 2024, Circana announced that Stuart Aitken would succeed Perry on January 1. Perry would remain a director. His public farewell was warmer and less polished than the usual executive valediction. He thanked his family, mentors and teams, acknowledged mistakes and made a joke about the white hair acquired along the way.

“I never aspired to be a CEO,” he wrote. He described his Christian faith as central to his identity and leadership as service to other people. Those statements sit alongside a career full of senior titles. They give his account of success a second audience: the people who lived with the travel, and the colleagues who helped make the results possible.

Kenvue had already become the next connection. He joined its board in December 2024, became interim CEO on July 14, 2025, and permanent CEO on November 2. The role brought brand strategy, operations, advertising relationships and analytics into the same office. His other board experience included businesses as different as J.M. Smucker and Chick-fil-A, with earlier directorships at e.l.f. Beauty and the maker of Louisville Slugger.

The next change is already on the calendar

On November 3, 2025, Kimberly-Clark announced an agreement to acquire Kenvue in a cash and stock transaction. The announced enterprise value was approximately $48.7 billion. Perry’s permanent appointment and the deal announcement arrived almost together. Running the company would now involve a proposed change in ownership as well as its everyday commercial work.

Shareholders of both companies approved the transaction in January 2026. An October announcement anticipated completion in the fourth quarter, subject to remaining approvals and closing conditions. By October 15, the acquisition was still described as pending. Integration plans were advancing; the completed combination remained ahead. The calendar contained an expectation, with work still required to make it happen.

There is a temptation to make every early setback look like preparation for the final appointment. Perry’s route is more interesting with the uncertainty left in. The MBA plan changed. The expected wrestling win disappeared. An international posting offered a reason to stay, and Google later offered a reason to leave. A scholarship made one next step possible; years of work followed it.

Seen that way, his career is a succession of decisions made with an incomplete view. He kept acquiring a different one. From a campus in Cincinnati to a manufacturer, an advertising business, an analytics company and another boardroom, the work kept asking him to reconsider what he knew. For someone who once looked past an opening opponent, that seems a useful habit to have acquired.